Il6 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



$1200 that was due. Well, that man simply couldn't raise 

 money to pay that mortgage and if another man and myself 

 had not chipped in and used some money we wanted badly our- 

 selves and put in four hundred dollars on a second mortgage, he 

 would have lost that farm for the mortgage of $1200. 



Now that is the difference between theory and practice. We 

 say these things are good, but we don't take hold of them. 

 There are a great many men today out on the farms, with an 

 orchard in a run-down condition, who, if they had the capital, 

 or if they could get it, would put this orchard in first class con- 

 dition, and it would pay them more than twenty per cent on the 

 extra investment that they would be obliged to make. And 

 right there is one of the serious handicaps of the fruit industry 

 in this State. There is lots of capital in Maine ; there is enough 

 to carry on our business, but it is invested in something out of 

 sight. If that same capital were invested right here at home 

 in these things that we know are safe, it would pay twice the 

 dividends it does where it is now. But a great many people 

 have settled in their minds that these things are not safe and 

 will not pay much. 



Now in regard to taking care of the orchard. I am going to 

 say that I have been locking seriously fcrr sixteen years for a 

 substitute for cultivation. I do not like to cultivate all this 

 orchard ground, but I have utterly failed to find what I consider 

 a suitable substitute for cultivation. I will tell you of a little 

 work which I did myself. Seven years ago two sections of my 

 orchard needed cultivation. I didn't feel as if I could culti- 

 vate it all, so I took one section and I plowed that and let the 

 other stay in grass. The next year, after the first j)lowing, I 

 took one hundred and twenty-five barrels off from that section 

 of orchard, while I had sixty from the sod orchard. The next 

 year I took one hundred and fifty barrels from the cultivated 

 orchard, and sixty from the sod orchard. But the next year I 

 seeded down the first cultivated orchard and plowed the sod 

 orchard. The year after that I took about one hundred and 

 twenty-five barrels from the orchard I had seeded down and 

 T think about fifty from the one I had recently plowed. The 

 next year, which was this year, I took about one hundred bar- 

 rels from the orchard that I seeded down, and over two hun- 

 dred from the orchard I had plowed recently ; and the Ben 



